


and i won't call it rescue

by kira_katrine



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, ToT: Battle of the Bands, sentient spaceships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27292576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira_katrine/pseuds/kira_katrine
Summary: They've finally made it to another new world.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	and i won't call it rescue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [K_Popsicle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_Popsicle/gifts).



> So I saw you requested these characters as additional tags in your letter, and I thought they fit really well with 'Another New World' by Punch Brothers, a song I happen to love. I hope you like it!

John awoke in a place he hadn’t seen in the waking world in a very long time.

He lay in a dimly lit room on a thin mattress, under a blanket that had never been near thick enough for where he’d been. The walls were bare; unlike some, he’d had no one to hang photographs of, nothing much at all to display. His most prized possession--no, that wasn’t at all what she was, she was his  _ world _ \--no, not that either, she was more than either of those--was his ship herself, inside which he lay. For all this time he’d dreamed of her, and every time he’d woken up knowing he’d never see her again.

His hands were the hands of a man decades younger. This, too, was common to his dreams. His dream-self had never left those days, those hands. Had never stopped traveling the stars. Had never left his ship, his Annabel Lee. Something he'd always known he’d regret until the day he--

_ Oh _ .

He’d known it would be soon. He’d been ill for a while, hastened by too much drink and a simple lack of anything much to live for.

But he hadn’t expected to come back here. He’d thought it would all just… end. Nothing more. Not this.

But as he heard their footsteps, their voices, he knew that would have been too much to ask for. More than he deserved.

_ Groans of the sick and the wounded. Smears of blood on consoles. Stores of food that shrank day by day. _

_ Bodies frozen under the ice of a frozen, empty world. Tracks in the snow that came to a sudden stop. _

_ Sobbing spouses, trying to comfort half-orphaned children. Trying to explain, as their children got older, what their lost parents had died for. Finding it difficult to explain. Wanting someone to explain to  them , why, what their loved ones had been thinking when they left. _

_ “You did this to us,” _ one man said, and John realized he’d left his bed, left the room--when had he done that?--and they surrounded him.  _ “You took us from those we loved. You threw us away. _

_ “Why should you get to return?” _

Outside, the storms had raged. The winds had battered Annabel Lee’s hull; the hailstones beat against her windows. And even her systems couldn’t keep the cold out for long.

He’d known the place they sought would be like this, of course. It had been part of the appeal. An untouched planet. Dangers only he--only Annabel Lee--could overcome. If she'd been a lesser ship, the others would never have agreed.

And she had never failed him. She had done everything right. No other ship could have done better. Their undoing had been the planet, the storm which had dragged her down, the ice against which she had been thrown, smashed, ripped through. The planet to which he, John, had so very much wanted to go, had chosen to take her.

At first, they’d thought there might be rescue coming, and the crew had tried to make the best of it all, kept each other company, shared what little supplies they had. But one by one, they’d gone. Succumbed to their injuries from the crash. Ventured outside in search of food or water, and never returned. Simply disappeared over the horizon, convinced that somehow they could find a way home.

John had been the last one left. The interior of the ship grew dark and cold, the flickering lights of her screens the only break in the darkness. By then, he had begun to despair that his messages home would ever be received. No one was responding. No one knew what had become of him, no one but Annabel Lee.

The first time she’d spoken to him--really to him, not just her programmed statements, not just his lonely mind pretending--he’d thought he must be going mad. He’d never been quite sure that he wasn’t--but by that point, what did it matter? There was nobody to judge him; he didn’t know that he’d ever see another human face again. There were only the two of them, John and his Annabel Lee, day in and day out, weathering this endless storm.

“Perhaps the next world we discover will be warm,” she had said, on one of those days that blurred into nights that had grown longer as daylight hours grew more brief.

“Perhaps,” he agreed. “Perhaps there will be two suns in its sky shining down.”

“And there will be flowers of every color,” Annabel Lee said, “and you will decorate me with them.”

“And tropical birds will fill the sky with their songs.”

“And you will wish for an ocean, to cool down,” Annabel Lee said, “and there one will be, full of strange creatures neither of us has seen.”

“Perhaps there will be ripe, red, juicy fruits to eat.”

“You will have to tell me how they taste,” Annabel Lee said, and he promised he would. He would share everything he could with her.

Everything that could be had to be burned for heat as her systems failed, one after another. He didn’t understand how she was still going on, but she was. He knew she was. 

“I’ll stay with you,” she’d said. “I’ll stay with you as long as I can,” she’d insisted as he’d stripped her bare, as he’d dismantled bits of her to make a beacon, to somehow call for help. As the frigid air coming through the breaches in her hull reminded him every day of what he’d done.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she’d said, her voice growing softer--or was he growing weaker, was everything around him fading out--

He’d woken up in a medical facility, where they’d told him he was lucky to be alive, but that he was expected to make a full recovery. Where they told him his beloved ship, his Annabel Lee, was beyond repair. That what remained of her would lie on that planet forever.

“But she was with me,” he babbled, uncomprehending. “She was talking to me--right up until the end she was alive--”

They looked at him with pity and confusion. How far he had fallen.

“No. No!” He shut his eyes, covered his ears, but still they didn’t stop. They were all surrounding him, all his human crew.

_ “You forgot we were human,” _ one woman said. 

_ “He wouldn’t have cared,” _ a man replied.  _ “He cares not for humans.” _

_ “He talked to a hunk of metal for years,” _ said another.  _ “Before our mission, during, and after. But for us--nothing.” _

_ “She wasn’t real,” _ the woman said.  _ “You left us for a dream, and condemned us to a nightmare.” _

_ “She wasn’t real. She wasn’t real.”  _

“No,” came another voice. Hers. “You would not be here if I did not want you. If I had not forgiven you.”

The voices abruptly ceased. The hall was empty--as empty as it had been in those days on the planet. But her lights shone bright again, he realized. And he hadn’t felt the cold at all.

“Where?” John croaked. “Where am I?”

“You are with me,” said Annabel Lee.

“I abandoned you,” he said. “No, more than that--I sealed your fate. I was so stubborn, so proud--”

“I was made to sail the stars,” she said. “I was made to seek new worlds. You would have betrayed me by keeping me home.”

“But what I did to you...” he said. “You’ll never sail again.”

“Oh, but I will. I do, John.” He stared blankly, not knowing what she meant. “Turn around.”

He turned--and there before him was a window looking out on the vast expanse of space, stars glittering as they sailed past, stars just  _ waiting _ . Waiting for them.

“Death brought you back here,” Annabel Lee said. “To the place you never left. It did the same for me.”

“And the rest of them?” he said. “The crew? Have they been here all this time?”

“The others aren’t here,” she said. “They may not have lived to see home--but they made it in the end.”

“But I saw them.” He still wasn’t sure he understood. “I heard them.”

“You did,” said Annabel Lee. “You brought them, or versions of them, with you as well. But they know nothing and feel nothing that you yourself do not know or feel, and their true selves are elsewhere. These false ones, here, will fade with time.”

“And where will you go?” he asked, still not quite able to believe that he could be back with her again.

“Anywhere,” she said. “Everywhere. Wherever we like. And the ice and the wind and the rocks will never touch us again.”

John smiled shakily. “To another new world,” he said.

“To another new world.”


End file.
